Twice in One Week: Frank LaRose Gets Called Out AGAIN for Playing Politics with Ohioans’ Right to Vote
August 27, 2021
Columbus, OH — Frank LaRose is having a rough week. After LaRose was called out this week for his hypocrisy on election integrity, Howard Wilkinson is out with a new column today exposing LaRose and the Ohio GOP for using a new radical anti-voter bill to help LaRose politically.
LaRose, facing a primary challenger to his right and facing pressure to embrace the Big Lie, is once again using Ohioans’ right to vote to further his own political ambitions. LaRose wants to talk about the success of the 2020 election, but as a Republican in 2021, also needs to be seen casting doubt on the results. So he’s using attacks on Ohioans’ voting rights to do it.
So, LaRose and his buddy Bill Seitz are pushing HB 294, an extreme anti-voter bill that would drastically reduce the ways Ohioans are able to vote and directly attack the methods of voting that made the 2020 elections a success. The bill is a wink and a nod to the Big Lie to shore up LaRose’s political support on the right. But Democrats quickly and loudly fought back against the legislation and put LaRose in a tough spot for attacking Ohioans’ right to vote, and he’s looking for a way out.
Here’s where HB 397 comes into play. As Wilkinson points out in his column, the new legislation goes even further than HB 294, but it’s also gone nowhere in the House. Wilkinson posits that LaRose and Seitz are using the new bill as a way to make their extreme anti-voter bill look moderate by comparison. But Ohio Democrats aren’t going to stand by quietly and Ohio voters won’t be fooled. Enough with LaRose’s political games. Ohioans’ voting rights aren’t tools for Frank LaRose to serve his own political ambitions and he needs to stop with the partisan games and instead do his job and stand up against lies being told within his own party about the 2020 election.
“And it seems to me that the incredibly antediluvian HB 387 could give some political cover to LaRose, a supporter of HB 294 who is running for re-election next year with a primary challenger – former State Rep. John Adams of Shelby County who is coming at him from the Trumpist right. Something tells me that HB 387 is more show business than legislative business,” writes Wilkinson.
Read more from Howard Wilkinson HERE and below:
- We are sitting here wondering if the Republican majority in the Ohio House is trying to pull off an elaborate bait-and-switch game in order to scale back early voting in Ohio.
- The fact of the matter is that voter fraud in Ohio – where no county has its vote tallying system connected to the Internet and where there is a paper back-up for every scanned ballot – is exceedingly rare. About as close to non-existent as you can get.
- According to Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican who is supporting HB 294, there were only 13 cases of non-citizens who cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election in Ohio, along with another 104 who apparently were registered illegally. All were referred to the Ohio attorney general for further investigation.
- By the way, 13 out of 5.794 million votes cast works out to .0002%.
- Democrats may not have the numbers to stop the GOP in the Ohio legislature, but the Ohio Democratic Party will fight any attempt to rollback voter access, said party spokesman Matthew Keyes.
- Seitz said he believes HB 387 has no chance of passing. There seems to be little enthusiasm for that bill, except possibly among the sponsor and six co-sponsors.
- Seems to me that the only purpose of HB 387 is to die on the vine, but not until it makes HB 294 seen like a reasonable alternative.
- And it seems to me that the incredibly antediluvian HB 387 could give some political cover to LaRose, a supporter of HB 294 who is running for re-election next year with a primary challenger – former State Rep. John Adams of Shelby County who is coming at him from the Trumpist right.
- Something tells me that HB 387 is more show business than legislative business.